


I hate everything about you/why do I love you?

by sa00harine



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Implied Relationships, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Not Happy, Someone Help Will Graham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:14:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27187121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sa00harine/pseuds/sa00harine
Summary: can't personalize tags on mobile but will kills hannibal at the end of wotl, not a happy fic and mainly just analyzing another direction of their character arcs
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Kudos: 12





	I hate everything about you/why do I love you?

**Author's Note:**

> get will graham a better therapist 2020 this man has so much trauma

_ No greater love hath man than to lay down his life for a friend.  _ Hannibal had uttered it like a promise. It was one Will didn’t intend to keep. 

The Dragon arrives- timely and suddenly all at once. He put a bullet through Hannibal’s side and a knife through Will’s cheek. Their final moments went by like seconds and decades all the time. The inside of Will’s mouth was cold with the press of the knife and night air where it had taken its leave, as well as overly hot with the blood, once an even stream and now a trickling ooze as the rest dried on his cheek and down his neck, flowed thick. His entire side felt alight with pain where the Dragon- Dolarhyde, had pierced some area of the junction between his collarbone and shoulder. 

A strange, vivid blur of pain- receiving and inflicting. He doesn’t know when however by the time it draws to an end, his breath is coming in labored pants. Hannibal’s too, a courtesy of his gunshot wound and numerous instances where Dolarhyde had tossed him like a ragdoll. 

They meet eyes briefly before the decision is made. There is no mercy.

Hannibal draws a swift, heavy breath and leaps, wrapping himself around Dolarhyde and rendering him incapable of doing more damage. Seizing the moment, Will charges. Like a bullet. Like a stag. He recalls, for one startling moment, the last time he’d seen Hannibal somewhere that felt like home. 

That had ended with Abigail dead this time, Alana hospitalized, and Jack granted a new and dully ruthless drive to see the culprit behind bars. It had left him with a smile. Will thinks of the feeling as he drives the knife into Dolarhyde’s stomach, pulling with all his might and not for a moment bothering to pretend it didn’t feel so righteous. So  _ good.  _

__ Above him, a strangled scream is cut short as Hannibal sinks his teeth into the Dragon’s neck. The gurgle of blood silences any further pained screams. The Great Red Dragon falls dead for the audience of the moon and the stars.

He staggers back, the blood spray warm on his face and sticky in his hair, slicking his shirt to his chest and making the air around him taste distinctly of copper. Will swipes his tongue over his own lip and it comes away bloody. When he looks up, Hannibal is staring at him unlike any look he’s worn before. 

Eyes so wide Will saw the whites before the pupils and jaw dropped- the picture of surpise and maybe, he noticed with renewed pleasure, maybe even fear he’d not yet seen on Hannibal’s face and never expected to. 

Hannibal extends his arm- perhaps one of the only gestures to Will that withheld good intentions. He shouldn’t be sure. Hannibal could just as easily take his weight and hurl him from the bluff and into the cold Atlantic. Will thinks about that- about the fall. What thoughts would run through his head? Would the wind string, or be cool and enveloping? Who would find him?  _ Would  _ anybody find him? 

It’s then he realizes that if he falls he isn’t falling alone. Will takes Hannibal’s arm and hoists himself up, body betraying him in its exhaustion and leaning into Hannibal’s arms. It feels too familiar to the last time he’d been held- a knife being dragged through his gut, blood spilling onto the clean tile floors below him. 

He’d felt betrayed then, though the lines were frankly unclear who had been in betrayal first. There weren’t lines anymore so much as scribbled boundaries they got their rocks off stepping over heedlessly. With terror forming a pit in his chest, he realizes he’d felt love, too. On some level he’d known it wouldn’t work out, and he’d let Hannibal plunge the knife into him without attempting to fight back. He’d wanted it there. And when he’d discovered that the knife didn’t remove the guilt and fear from the depths of him, he’d just felt hollow. 

Tonight, he felt anything but. Will tilts his head to look at Hannibal. Profound love and beauty stirs within him like no other sensation he’s known. Achilles and Patroclus. He didn’t want the world to conquer. 

It connected, what he has to do. Will shudders. After all is said and done he’ll be praised a hero- just like with Garret Jacob Hobbs. A title he was disgusted to wear when it didn’t feel like the truth. Heroes didn’t enjoy the act of taking a life. Heroes didn’t kill parts of themselves and then throw it down into the ocean so it was swept away for the better of the world. 

Will glances up at Hannibal. The other man is breathing heavy and hurt, looking at his lips. After a second, he meets Will’s eyes. What he sees there is unbearably soft. He wished he could say he hated that. He couldn’t, and that was the part of Will he couldn’t live with loving. Hannibal. 

“See,” says Hannibal, a croak at best, beaten and exhausted but thoroughly exhilarated. He was vulnerable right now- no pretenses wasted on trying to keep up his composed facade after what had happened. It would be easy to catch him by surprise. Of that Will was sure. “This is all I ever wanted for you, Will. For both of us.” 

He wanted it too. Nothing could compare to the sweet adrenaline making him feel so alive. 

Will grips onto him tighter, figuring to satisfy the dire need to be close, to be touching Hannibal, he’d spent too long repressing. Then he relaxes his hands, flat on Hannibal’s chest. There was a power to feeling the cannibal’s heart thump under his palm- akin to holding your shoe above an oblivious bug. 

“I don’t want it.” 

Hannibal blinks. He looks wounded. Tired. Will can feel it- empathy sparing him nothing- that Hannibal had finally trusted him not to foster doubt, resentment, or fear. His trust was misplaced.

“Will-” 

“I’m sorry,” he says, hoarse, letting go of the other man and taking a shaky step back. He had quite possibly the most powerful- most grandiose killer at his hand. How unorthodox that the only thing he wanted to do was plummet with him- into death, into a new life where they were the only two that mattered. 

That wasn’t a choice. 

Will grabs the knife again, tilting Hannibal’s chin up with it. Hannibal makes no move to fight back. He gingerly drags it down to lay over his neck, giving an experimental press and watching- feeling- Hannibal’s throat bob as he swallows and the blade digs in. There isn’t blood, not yet, just pressure. “You’re going to kill me,” says Hannial, carefully resigned. 

“I have to.” 

His hand, still on Will’s hip from their embrace, drops. Will misses it. Mourns it. 

“Do you want to?” 

A tear drops, parting the blood on Will’s face. “Doesn’t matter.” 

Hannibal nods, eyes scanning as Will takes the knife to the center of his chest and further, to his stomach. “You have a choice, Will. We can run, just as we could have before.” 

“Stop talking, Hannibal,” Will says. “Please.” 

“Since you’re going to kill me, at least allow me the option of last words.”

Will pauses. “What do you have to say to me that I don’t already know?” 

Hannibal smiles. His lips wobble in a way that’s almost beautiful. His teeth are red. So are the whites of his eyes. “Nothing that we have time for here and now.” 

“Time has reversed,” Will quotes eerily, recalling the very words Hannibal had said to him in the kitchen as he lay bleeding out. 

“I did break you, and it is fair you in turn break me. How lovely we become the teacups shattered on the tile, isn’t it?” Hannibal asks, eyes tilting up to the sky. It’s dark, unfurling gray clouds look like smoke. The air is thick with blood and salt, and down below the water is the type of cold that chills to the bone and weighs you down. “This is an ending I have peace with. I expect we’ll meet again, dear Will.” 

Will freezes at the endearment. He brings the blade back, laying between Hannibal’s collarbones. “Tell Abigail hello for me, will you?” 

Hannibal lays a hand over his. “I won’t have to. That wasn’t the last you saw of her nor is it the last you see of me,” he reminds Will. 

He gives a jerky nod. “Goodnight, Hannibal.” 

Then, Will tugs. The knife slices evenly- a deep gash from Hannibal’s chest to his stomach. It’s so fast that blood sprays over them both swiftly. Cloaked in layers of his own blood, Francis Dolarhyde’s, and now Hannibal’s, Will shoves Hannibal and after catching a glimpse of his face- turned up to the sky instead of to the fall below, eyes closed and eyelashes fanning over his cheeks, mouth set in something that only equated to content- turns his back until he hears the indicating splash and impact of Hannibal going under. 

He collapses, knees hitting the ground with an ache that he now notices runs through his entire body. 

The waves only take a red hue for a torturously slow eight-count of seconds until they’re soothed over again. It starts to rain. Will sat at the edge and let the sky bathe him, blood washing off and tears among them. 

**Author's Note:**

> im so sorry


End file.
